Thursday, February 17

Motel One feels convincingly upmarket compared to, say, Travelodge but the room gets smaller the longer I occupy it, and it felt pretty tiny to start with. My plan to write at the speed of light all morning slides away from me as the desk in the corner of the gloomily dark room gets less inviting by the minute.

I check out and take a ten minute walk to Centraal station. I then walk around the centre for an hour or so until I sit down on a wall and take this picture.

I listen to sirens and watch police motorbikes race around at high speed, shouting and waving. One in three people in Brussels appear to work for the police force. They don’t solve crimes, they race ahead of convoys of diplomats and other VIPs, making sure that they do not get held up by something as mundane as traffic lights.

Frédéric told me that you can measure your importance in the world of EU politics by the size of your motorbike escort. If you find yourself going to a meeting in a taxi your status has plunged to zero.

The cars that go past every couple of minutes do not have this problem.